Brown Attorney: ‘Souls of Thousands of Black People Crying out from the Grave’

"We have set as the foundation for the American justice system trial by jury, where it’s all transparent, where all the evidence and witnesses are cross-examined and vetted. People think that is fair. People think that is impartial. But when you have this secret grand jury proceeding where there is only one lawyer in the room and that lawyer is the local prosecutor who has a symbiotic relationship with the local police department and the local police officer, and has no relationship, no regard for this young person of color, then you see the results all the time coming out where they are [indecipherable, they are swept under the rug and we’re told to just go on and get over it.

Well, we can’t continue just to go ahead and get over it because these are our children that are being killed. The statistics are alarming. Young black man between ages of 15-19 are said to be likely -- to be killed by the police 21 percent more than anybody else. And they are stopped three times by police more than anybody else. So we have to get police officers who are not cold as ice, like the shooter of Michael Brown, but police officers who care about trying to have a relationship with the community, not seeing the citizens of low income communities or minority communities as demons, as criminals, but as citizens, that we all have to be together and that we’re all in the same boat and we have vested interest. So unless we don’t have this serious dialog, we’re going to continue to see this happen over and over again and Michael Brown and the souls of thousands of people of color are crying out from the grave saying, we have to fix this system."